Re-Imagining Pakistan

#30 by uba

muslims to seek separation

Are you kidding? Seperation from whom? The British? It was certainly not from hindus. They were never married to begin with. It was partition my friend, not seperation or secession as you guys maistakenly perceive it to be. Ranjit below is right.

First of all... it looks like Saima Shah has taken over the editorship of this website yet again... hence such provocative and misleading subphrases, all there to excite the fat nazi, who has accordingly regurgitated his nonsense in 22 and 23. This is a novel idea... make a strawman and break it and say the idea is not working. The idea has never been followed to have worked or not worked.

All the same no one bothers to define what is not working. The chances of Professor Hoodbhoy being a high flying Karachi Grammar/MIT Physicist at Quaid-e-Azam University Islamabad, had Pakistani not worked : 0%. I`d say Jinnah`s Pakistan is working very well... even too well. Since the great physicist of QAU has never produced any ground breaking work in Physics... one could say Jinnah`s Pakistan worked even to the benefit of mediocrity. After all without this mulk-e-Pakistan to criticise and without any notable achievement in physics, certain professors would be out of a job... quite unlike may I add Dr. Abdul Salam, a firm believer in Unity, Faith and Discipline and its originator, who is Pakistan`s and the Muslim World`s only Physics Nobel Prize Winner... ofcourse Pakistan did not benefit him but he benefited Pakistan.

The irony is (and the professor knows it quite well but I suppose it is out of fashion) that the only Pakistan that can work is Jinnah`s Pakistan as he envisaged and envisioned it for his people. A Pakistan based on Justice, Fairplay and Impartiality... this is Jinnah`s Pakistan... it is not there, so there is no question of it not working.

(An Aside: It makes sense that Indians get a rather long one up their rear orifice everytime the name Jinnah is mentioned... but BJKumar, the follower of the Racist Casteist Hindu exclusivist fascist Bigot Gandhi will never answer is why this bad bad man he hates so much... Jinnah... whose integrity and honesty was accepted by even his worst opponents and he was - according to Ambedkar and many others- the only really unpurcheasable politician and this Jinnah... who is the only politician to be known as the best Ambassador of Hindu Muslim Unity ... and who gave most of his life to United India... turned so vociferously against you guys.... the answer to that ... the Fat Nazi will never give because it means giving credit where its due... to yourself.) While most historians around the world have now reached a consensus on partition and how it was brought about... by Congress` insistence on its one nation dogma ... and its inability to accept diversity... yet the author of this article has attacked those who fought against the same idea in the name of the same idea. This is what I call irony upon irony upon irony.

So at a time of disorder and chaos Jinnah asked his countrymen to remain united, disciplined and to have faith in themselves (Yaqeen-e-Muhkam)... he also asked them to work hard to make a great people-friendly state. What does that have to do with the present chaos? Is Pakistan united? Do we have faith in ourselves - clearly you professor don`t and are we a disciplined lot- perhaps you ought to visit the chaotic streets of Karachi and Lahore at mid day?

So what is it that you are on about...?


And here is a piece from Eqbal Ahmed... yes unlike you he was actually good at what he did... and you seem to admire him as the embodiment of all the values you claim to represent...

Jinnah, in a Class of His Own
[Dawn, 11 June 1995]

Mohammad Ali Jinnah is an enigma of modern history. His aristocratic English lifestyle, Victorian manners, and secular outlook rendered him a most unlikely leader of India’s Muslims. Yet, he led them to separate statehood, creating history and, in Saad R. Khairi’s apt phrase, ‘altering geography’.

Several scholars, among them H.M. Seervai, Aisha Jalal and Saad R. Khairi, help explain his shift from Indian nationalism to Muslim separatism but the mystery of Jinnah’s appeal remains. After all, neither Muslim nationalism nor the idea of Pakistan originated with him; he embraced them somewhat reluctantly.

There is another way of viewing the matter. In the twentieth century, two extraordinary personalities competed for the leadership of Indian Muslims. They were Abul Kalam Azad and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. As a point of departure in comprehending the aspirations of Muslims in India, we might review their biographical profiles.

The contrasts in their family background, education, culture, and styles of leadership were remarkable. Azad’s ancestors belonged since Emperor Babar’s time to the Persian and Urdu-speaking Muslim aristocracy of India. His great-grandfather was one of the last Ruknul Mudarrasin, a position roughly analogous to today’s ‘minister of education’, in Mughal India. After the War of 1857 his family migrated to Madina where it intermingled with the Sharifain aristocracy. Azad’s mother was a daughter of Sheikh Mohammed Zaher Watri, in his time Madina’s best known ‘Alim’. His father Maulana Khair al-Din gained much fame in the Muslim world for his ten-volume work on Islam, and for his central role in the restoration of Nahr Zubeida, Makkah’s main source of water. Among Indian Muslims who were still wistful over a lost empire, and reeling from the excesses of British colonisation, it is hard to envision a family with better credentials than Abul Kalam Azad’s.

Abul Kalam was a most worthy scion of an extraordinary family with roots deep in the duality—Indian and pan-Islamic—to which South Asia’s Muslims have been historically linked both psychologically and culturally. Born in Makkah, he was fluent in Arabic, at ease in Persian, and a most gifted writer of Urdu prose. He was deeply immersed in the mystical tradition of Islam. As early as 1919 he wrote on Sarmad Shaheed and the grand dichotomy between state and civil society in Islam. His later commentaries on the Holy Qura’an are still regarded as among the best in the world.

“Who is your master among the mufassareen?” I asked the late Maulana Kausar Niazi some years ago. “Abul Kalam” he replied reflexively. Al-Hilal, the magazine Azad founded in 1912, at age 22, marked the beginning of serious, mass circulation Urdu journalism. With its successor al-Balgah, it remains a milestone in the development of Urdu as a popular vehicle of political and social discourse. Azad was a spellbinding speaker and, like Jinnah, an ardent nationalist. In 1923, at age 35, he was the youngest man to be elected president of the Indian National Congress, a record Nehru will break later. An overwhelming majority of India’s Ulema supported him.

The man we shall later revere as the Quaid-i-Azam was a contemporary of Azad, and a most unlikely contender for Muslim leadership. He was born in 1876; Azad in 1890. But beyond the proximity of age, the two stood in sharp contrast to each other. While Azad’s aristocratic roots lay in the Muslim heartland of UP and Bengal, Jinnah was born to a middle class business family in the port town of Hindu-dominated Karachi. At age 21 he moved to England, thence to Bombay, the modern gateway to British India. Unlike Azad who belonged to the majority Sunni denomination of Islam, Jinnah came from the minority Shi’a community. He was the prototypical westernized Indian, tutored at Lincoln’s Inn, tailored at Saville Row, in his youth a Shakepearian actor, a constitutionalist barrister in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, married to a Parsi woman. More at home in English than his native Gujrati, Jinnah spoke little Urdu which he would later designate as Pakistan’s official language, knew neither Persian nor Arabic, and had only the rudimentary knowledge of Islam which is common to western educated Muslims. He was anathema to an overwhelming majority of the Ulema of the subcontinent, including so grand a figure as Maulana Husain Ahmed Madani and such ideologue as Abul Ala Maudoodi.

Mr. Jinnah made little effort to overcome his obvious handicaps. Unlike Barrister M.K. Gandhi with whom Jinnah shared similarities of language, class, and education, and who donned the Mahatma’s home spun dhoti, Jinnah stuck to his western ways and pin-stripe suits. He bowed but rarely to populist symbols, appearing only occasionally at political ralies, and shunning the display of emotion in public. Reasoned arguments and cold logic were the hallmark of Jinnah’s discourse. He spoke at political rallies as though he were addressing a courtroom, or a conference of lawyers. This is not the populist style anywhere, least of all in South Asia. Yet, in less that a decade of his return from London in 1935, he had eclipsed his political foes no less than colleagues in the Muslim League, and successfully established himself and the League as the sole spokesman of India’s Muslims. In the elections of 1937 the Muslim League barely survived as a minor political party; in 1940 it set Pakistan as its goal. Barely seven years later the new state was born.

In the Introduction to this first volume of Jinnah papers Professor Zaidi has asked this central question: “What then turned Jinnah into the embodiment of Muslim hopes and aspirations?” One answer, admirably documented by Saad Khairi and H.M. Seervai, is that the leadership of the Indian National Congress allowed Jinnah no alternative even though he constantly probed for one. But a deeper explanation offered in Professor Zaidi’s Introduction worth quoting: “What distinguished Jinnah from his great contemporaries is that he was quite self-consciously a modern man – one who valued, above all, reason, discipline, organisation, and economy. Jinnah differed from other Muslim Leaders in so far as he was uncompromisingly committed to substance rather than symbol, reason rather than emotion, modernity rather than tradition.”

But how could this apparently modern figure so powerfully appeal to a people laden with tradition and religious inertia? I should summarise Professor Zaidi’s answer to this question: Jinnah’s peculiar appeal worked because collectively Indian Muslims had an instinctive if inarticulate grasp of recent history. “It was a community conscious of its declining condition, and it had experienced the ineffectiveness of old remedies. After all, neither the revivalist prescriptions of Shah Waliullah, nor the fiery war cries of Syed Ahmed Shahid, nor the flamboyant, though confused, demarche of the Khilafat movement – with which Abdul Kalam Azad had become associated and from which Jinnah kept a pronounced distance – provided relief from the ills which afflicted Muslim society in India. Restorationist alternatives had nearly exhausted when Jinnah re-entered the second act of contemporary Muslim tragedy in India. On their part, leaders of the Indian National Congress were so overcome with hubris that they refused to open viable political doors to this wounded and bewildered people.

Significantly, by then the modernist view of the causes of Muslim decline and of the remedies it required, especially as articulated by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and his ideological successors, including Iqbal, had seeped into the consciousness of the Muslim intelligentsia. There was to this phenomenon also a pan-Islamic context: In the 1930s the Muslim world as a whole had entered what Albert Hourani has described as the Liberal Age when Muslim nationalism grew exponentially on the premises of modernism and reform. Mr Jinnah returned from England in 1935 to find himself swept to the crest of this wave.

In the four decades that have followed his passing, Pakistan has moved precipitously away from the country its founding father had envisioned, and the people had created at costs beyond counting. The two volumes of Jinnah Papers and the archives from which they are drawn do not tell the story of the cowardice and betrayals which followed the Quaid-i-Azam. What they do tell us is who he was, how he waged a difficult and deeply painful struggle for statehood, the vision he nourished, and the hopes he had for this country. I would like to recall him and remind us in passing of what we have done with his legacy. I am sorry if in the process I cause some discomfort to some of you readers.


Apparently your Eqbal Ahmed also shared my belief that Jinnah`s Pakistan is the only solution...

Jib-Jab summarizes 2006

Click here

Re: # 35
bringing people back to the real world - is that going to be your New Year`s Resolution!

#5

Pakistan`s founding principles were justice fairplay and complete equality for all citizens regardless of religion caste and creed. We might not have gotten there because of our hang ups but one day we shall.

Nation states take time to settle and Pakistan is still miles ahead of India- developmentally, socially, whic despite its supposedly secular state system and a constitution (a gift of Dr. Ambedkar which has been squandered) is very nakedly a Hindu fascist country run along racist, casteist, Gandhian lines.

It is the spectre of Gandhiism and fascism that rules supreme even today, when people are burnt alive in India because they happen to practise a faith different from that of the Brute majority. The basis of entire Indian social system is inherently contradictory to any concept of pluralism and/or democracy....

Here are India`s founding principles: Casteism, Racism and Hindu Fascism

Behind all the self righteous mumbo jumbo, this is what you find:


On What Gandhi wanted

The last week has been very busy. We have not had a moment`s leisure. We saw Mr. Theodore Morison of Aligarh and the well-known Mr. Stead of the Review of Reviews. Mr. Stead has boldly come out to give us all the help he can. He was therefore requested to write to the same Boer leaders that they should not consider Indians as being on the same level as Kaffirs

Indian Opinion, 15-12-1906, CWOMG Vol. 6, pg 183



private delete

October 4, 2005

On What Gandhi wanted (3)

CLASSIFICATION OF ASIATICS WITH NATIVES

The cell was situated in the Native quarters and we were housed in one that was labeled `For Coloured Debtors`. It was this experience for which we were perhaps all unprepared. We had fondly imagined that we would have suitable quarters apart from the Natives. As it was, perhaps, just as well that we were classed with Natives. We would now be able to study the life of Native prisoners, their customs and manners. ...Degradation underlay the classing of Indians with natives. The Asiatic Act seemed to me to be the summit of our degradation. It did appear to me, as I think it would appear to any unprejudiced reader, that it would have been simple humanity if we were given special quarters. ...the Governor of the gaol tried to make us as comfortable as he could...But he was powerless to accommodate us beyond the horrible din and the yells of the Native prisoners throughout the day and partly at night also. Many of the native prisoners are only one degree removed from the animal and often created rows and fought amongst themselves in their cells.

Indian Opinion 7-3-1908, CWOMG Vol. 8, pg 120


Apart from whether or not this implies degradation, I must say it is rather dangerous. Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilized -- the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty, and live almost like animals. Each ward contains nearly 50 to 60 of them. They often started rows and fought among themselves. The reader can easily imagine the plight of the poor Indian thrown into such company

Indian Opinion, 7-3-1908, CWOMG Vol. 8, pg 135



private delete

October 4, 2005

On What Gandhi wanted (2)

INDIANS ON PAR WITH KAFFIRS

There, our garments were stamped with the letter `N`, which meant that we were being classed with the Natives. We were all prepared for hardships, but not quite for this experience. We could understand not being classed with the whites, but to be placed on the same level with the Natives seemed too much to put up with. I then felt that Indians had launched on passive resistance too soon. Here was further proof that the obnoxious law was intended to emasculate the Indians.

It was, however, as well that we were classified with the Natives. It was a welcome opportunity to study the treatment meted out to the Natives, their conditions [of life in the gaol] and their habits. ...We were given a separate ward because we were sentenced to simple imprisonment; otherwise we would have been in the same ward [with the Kaffirs]. Indians sentenced to hard labour are in fact kept with the Kaffirs.

Apart from whether or not this implies degradation, I must say it is rather dangerous. Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilized -- the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty, and live almost like animals. Each ward contains nearly 50 to 60 of them. They often started rows and fought among themselves. The reader can easily imagine the plight of the poor Indian thrown into such company

Indian Opinion, 7-3-1908, CWOMG Vol. 8, pg 135



private delete

October 4, 2005

On What Gandhi wanted (1)

I have, though, resolved in my mind on an agitation to ensure that Indian prisoners are not lodged with Kaffirs or others. When I arrived at the place, there were about 15 Indian prisoners. Except for three, all of them were satyagrahis. The three were charged with other offences. These prisoners were generally lodged with kaffirs. When I reached there, the chief warder issued an order that all of us should be lodged in a separate room. I observed with regret that some Indians were happy to sleep in the same room as the Kaffirs, the reason being that they hoped there for a secret supply of tobacco, etc. This is a matter of shame to us. We may entertain no aversion to the Kaffirs, but we cannot ignore the fact that there is no common ground between them and us in the daily affairs of life. Moreover, those who wish to sleep in the same room have ulterior motives for doing so.
Obviously, we ought to abandon such notions if we want to make progress.


Indian Opinion, 6-1-1909, CWOMG Vol. 9, pg 149



On What Gandhi wanted (9)



Gandhi`s disdain for black people continues:

It is one thing to register Natives who would not work, and whom it is very difficult to find out if they absent themselves, but it is another thing and most insulting to expect decent, hard-working, and respectable Indians, whose only fault is that they work too much, to have themselves registered

What is a Coolie, Indian Opinion 2151904, CWOMG Vol. 4, pg 193

CWOMG: Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi


private delete

October 4, 2005

On What Gandhi wanted (8)



The whole affair is as much a disgrace to the Indian community as it is to the British Empire. The British rulers take us to be so lowly and ignorant that they assume that, like the Kaffirs who can be pleased with toys and pins, we can also be fobbed off with trinkets

Indian Opinion, 29-2-1908, CWOMG Vol. 8, pg 105

CWOMG: Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi


private delete

October 4, 2005

On What Gandhi wanted (7)


More on SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL theory of Gandhiji...

His Excellency has, moreover, justified the definition of `coloured person` on the ground that it is a legacy from the old Government. But British Indians object to the definition for that very reason. Their position is this. The ordinances will not in practice apply to them. The Boer Government insulted the Indians by classing them with the Kaffirs. Now there is no occasion to perpetuate a needless insult

Indians in the O.R.C, Indian Opinion, 6-1-1906, CWOMG, Vol. 5, pg 177-178

Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi: CWOMG


private delete

October 4, 2005

On What Gandhi wanted (6)


More on SEPARATE AND UNEQUAL theory of Gandhiji...

His Excellency has, moreover, justified the definition of `coloured person` on the ground that it is a legacy from the old Government. But British Indians object to the definition for that very reason. Their position is this. The ordinances will not in practice apply to them. The Boer Government insulted the Indians by classing them with the Kaffirs. Now there is no occasion to perpetuate a needless insult

Indians in the O.R.C, Indian Opinion, 6-1-1906, CWOMG, Vol. 5, pg 177-178

Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi: CWOMG


private delete

October 4, 2005

On What Gandhi wanted (5)



It reduces British Indians to a status lower than that of the aboriginal races of South Africa and the Coloured people.

Indian Opinion 15-9-1906, CWOMG Vol. 5, pg 419-423

On What Gandhi wanted (14)

On Minority White rule in South Africa:

We, therefore, have no hesitation in agreeing with the view that in the long run assisted Asiatic immigration into the Transvaal would be disastrous to the white settlement. People will gradually accommodate themselves to relying upon Asiatic labour, and any White immigration of the special class required in the Transvaal on a large scale will be practically impossible. It would be equally unfair to the Natives of the soil. It is all very well to say that they would not work, and that, if the Asiatics were introduced, that would be a stimulus to work; but human nature is the same everywhere, and once Asiatic labour is resorted to, there would not be a sustained effort to induce the Natives to work under what would otherwise be, after all, gentle compulsion. There would be then less talk about taxing the Natives and so forth. Natives themselves, used as they are to a very simple mode of life, will always be able to command enough wages to meet their wants; and the result will be putting back their progress for an indefinite length of time. We have used the words `gentle compulsion` in the best sense of the term; we mean compulsion of the same kind that a parent exercises over children


Indian Opinion, 9-7-1903, CWOMG Vol. 3, pg 359-360

CWOMG: COLLECTED WORKS OF MAHATMA GANDHI.

private delete

October 4, 2005

On What Gandhi wanted (13)


On Minority White rule in South Africa:

We, therefore, have no hesitation in agreeing with the view that in the long run assisted Asiatic immigration into the Transvaal would be disastrous to the white settlement. People will gradually accommodate themselves to relying upon Asiatic labour, and any White immigration of the special class required in the Transvaal on a large scale will be practically impossible. It would be equally unfair to the Natives of the soil. It is all very well to say that they would not work, and that, if the Asiatics were introduced, that would be a stimulus to work; but human nature is the same everywhere, and once Asiatic labour is resorted to, there would not be a sustained effort to induce the Natives to work under what would otherwise be, after all, gentle compulsion. There would be then less talk about taxing the Natives and so forth. Natives themselves, used as they are to a very simple mode of life, will always be able to command enough wages to meet their wants; and the result will be putting back their progress for an indefinite length of time. We have used the words `gentle compulsion` in the best sense of the term; we mean compulsion of the same kind that a parent exercises over children


For Beej who is apparently BLIND: Indian Opinion, 9-7-1903, CWOMG Vol. 3, pg 359-360

CWOMG: COLLECTED WORKS OF MAHATMA GANDHI.


private delete

October 4, 2005

On What Gandhi wanted (12)



What the British Indians pray for is very little. They ask for no political power. They admit the British race should be the dominant race in South Africa. All they ask for is freedom for those that are now settled and those that may be allowed to come in future to trade, to move about, and to hold landed property without any hindrance save the ordinary legal requirements

Petition to Natal Legislature, CWOMG, vol3, pg 330


private delete

October 4, 2005

On What Gandhi wanted (11)


Ah... and they said Plessey Vs Ferguson was bad...

Well here is Gandhi with his theory of ``Separate and Unequal``

...The petition dwells upon ``the co-mingling of the Coloured and white races``. May we inform the members of the conference that, so far as the British Indians are concerned, such a thing is practically unknown? If there is one thing, which the Indian cherishes more than any other, it is the purity of type. Why bring such a question into the controversy at all?

The Transvaal Chambers and British Indians, Indian Opinion 24-12-03, CWOMG Vol. 4, pg 89


private delete

October 4, 2005

On What Gandhi wanted (10)

More on Gandhi`s theory of ``separate and unequal``

Why, of all places in Johannesburg, the Indian Location should be chosen for dumping down all the Kaffirs of the town passes my comprehension. ...Of course, under my suggestion, The Town Council must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location. About this mixing of Kaffirs with the Indians, I must confess I feel most strongly

Indian Opinion, 10-4-04, CWOMG Vol. 4, pg 130-131



Other Gandhian Statements that we need to consider...

`Sanghtan is a really sound movement. Every community is entitled, indeed bound to organize itself as a seperate entity` : Mahatma Gandhi

(Young India January 6th 1927)


A translation of a Gujrati essay he wrote in 1922 for Niya Jawan

(1) I believe that if Hindu Society has been able to stand it is because it is founded on the caste system.
(2) The seeds of swaraj are to be found in the caste system. Different castes are like different sections of miliary division. Each division is working for the good of the whole....

(3) A community which can create the caste system must be said to possess unique power of organization.

(4) Caste has a ready made means for spreading primary education. Each caste can take the responsibility for the education of the children of the caste. Caste has a political basis. It can work as an electorate for a representative body. Caste can perform judicial functions by electing persons to act as judges to decide disputes among members of the same caste. With castes it is easy to raise a defense force by requiring each caste to raise a brigade.

(5) I believe that interdining or intermarriage are not necessary for promoting national unity. That dining together creates friendship is contrary to experience. If this was true there would have been no war in Europe.... Taking food is as dirty an act as answering the call of nature. The only difference is that after answering call of nature we get peace while after eating food we get discomfort. Just as we perform the act of answering the call of nature in seclusion so also the act of taking food must also be done in seclusion.

(6) In India children of brothers do not intermarry. Do they cease to love because they do not intermarry? Among the Vaishnavas many women are so orthodox that they will not eat with members of the family nor will they drink water from a common water pot. Have they no love? The caste system cannot be said to be bad because it does not allow interdining or intermarriage between different castes.

(7) Caste is another name for control. Caste puts a limit on enjoyment. Caste does not allow a person to transgress caste limits in pursuit of his enjoyment. That is the meaning of such caste restrictions as interdining and intermarriage.

(8) To destroy caste system and adopt Western European social system means that Hindus must give up the principle of hereditary occupation which is the soul of the caste system. Hereditary principle is an eternal principle. To change it is to create disorder. I have no use for a Brahmin if I cannot call him a Brahmin for my life. It will be a chaos if every day a Brahmin is to be changed into a Shudra and a Shudra is to be changed into a Brahmin.

(9) The caste system is a natural order of society. In India it has been given a religious coating. Other countries not having understood the utility of the caste system, it existed only in a loose condition and consequently those countries have not derived from caste system the same degree of advantage which India has derived. These being my views I am opposed to all those who are out to destroy the caste system.

Re: # 6

Yes and Arundhati Roy is your only hope... and she can do pathetically little to save you sadly.

Mr. Hoodbhoy,

There is absolutely no need to reimagine Pakistan, what we need is to realize the principles of our founding father and simply implement justice, fair play and impartiality.

It seems you have gotten a bit carried away with the honor to deliver a lecture at an art college, as evident by the need to choose a provocative title questioning Jinnah`s Pakistan and then by outlining things that don`t quiet make a case against his vision, rather this is a rambling of a professor of Science trying to make it with the in artsy crowd.

Pakistan faces a shortage of opinionmakers, which is why we listened so carefully to you. But you`re in error if you think that you can talk about freedoms and justice and gain our favor to the extent that we will overlook your attempts to marginalize the efforts of a very hard working leader whose integrity is unquestioned by any reader of History.

Have a point Mr. Hoodbhoy.

``Faith in yourself, unity in your ranks, and discipline in your life,`` is what Jinnah said we should have. Just because it is reduced to a monument gives you no right to take jabs at the actual message.

And don’t talk about the freedom for women. It’s clear that you don’t understand what it means in reality. It was Jinnah who promoted women’s political involvement and asked them to come out of their conservative Islamic hoods. May I ask what programs you’ve initiated for the uplift /scholarship/affirmative action programs for women to make it big in Science? Do women credit you for their rise to academic excellence? You were in a position to institutionalize such programs very effectively, and I wonder if you have.

Last time I asked you how many Ph.Ds you produced and you named a number that’s laughable. Perhaps you should do your part and focus on your area of expertise. Leave the art students to listen to FM radio, they are far more intelligent than you give them credit for.

Aisha Sarwari

Don`t call this fellow a professor of science yaar... he is only as much a professor of science as Dr. Farhat Hashmi is a scholar of Islam.

One yearns for men like Dr. Salam... who remained true to themselves and their people despite worst form of religious oppression. He was the last Pakistani and last Muslim to believe in Unity Faith and Discipline...

They don`t make them like that any more. We have caricatures... Hoodbhoys and Hashmis... and a world gone mad.

Re: # 37

mantolives: a question not a ungle question but a serious one.

Thomas jefferson slave owner shagger of his slaves etc etc and a bad un....but he bequathed the US with something useful. The americans are grateful for this...and make full use of it. They donot care if you call him a racist, a slave owner, a hypocrite etc. In a similar manner, you have Simon Bolivar in all of South america. Similarly Gandhi in India. He gavethe indians something a presnt ifyou like, and along with the likes of Nehru, Ambedkar etc gave India something precious. Indians have been successfull in making something out of it. They donot care if want to dig up shit on Gandhi, ambedkar, nehru et al.(remember shit can be dug up on any body - including you (despite your efforts at erasing chowk archives and your paen to the Nazis (gas chambers and motor ways and all))). In Jefferson`s case its been 200+years since he was around.

Gandhis and the others case 60 years. 60 years is 3+ generations of people. That is a lot of generations. And India and Indians have moved on from those days (alright in stutters so what - they have a goal and sort of know how to get there)

Jinnah gave pakistan something great and meaningful. and its been 60 years since that present was delivered. again 3+ generations of people. Yet All people like you can talk about is Jinnah this Jinnah that. As if he is the only guy in town. What abot=ut the rest of you guys. Kya tum sab ghaas charne pe lage ho! or as a wag would say kay tum sab sale muuth marne pe tule ho! Better still jhak marhe thekya sab. Get on with life. Jinnah is not here. The times and situations and environment is not the same as in Jinnah`s time. You need to bring yourself into the 21st century and not hark back to the 20th.

Re: # 37

mantolives: a question not a ungle question but a serious one.

Thomas jefferson slave owner shagger of his slaves etc etc and a bad un....but he bequathed the US with something useful. The americans are grateful for this...and make full use of it. They donot care if you call him a racist, a slave owner, a hypocrite etc. In a similar manner, you have Simon Bolivar in all of South america. Similarly Gandhi in India. He gavethe indians something a presnt ifyou like, and along with the likes of Nehru, Ambedkar etc gave India something precious. Indians have been successfull in making something out of it. They donot care if want to dig up shit on Gandhi, ambedkar, nehru et al.(remember shit can be dug up on any body - including you (despite your efforts at erasing chowk archives and your paen to the Nazis (gas chambers and motor ways and all))). In Jefferson`s case its been 200+years since he was around.

Gandhis and the others case 60 years. 60 years is 3+ generations of people. That is a lot of generations. And India and Indians have moved on from those days (alright in stutters so what - they have a goal and sort of know how to get there)

Jinnah gave pakistan something great and meaningful. and its been 60 years since that present was delivered. again 3+ generations of people. Yet All people like you can talk about is Jinnah this Jinnah that. As if he is the only guy in town. What abot=ut the rest of you guys. Kya tum sab ghaas charne pe lage ho! or as a wag would say kay tum sab sale muuth marne pe tule ho! Better still jhak marhe thekya sab. Get on with life. Jinnah is not here. The times and situations and environment is not the same as in Jinnah`s time. You need to bring yourself into the 21st century and not hark back to the 20th.

#40 #39 I donot want to burst your bubbles (and interfere in your little world).....
but the mans work is highly cited.....and many of his papers (all scholarly works, refereed and published in LEARNED INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS) have citations in the 300`s. So I would go easy on this aspect, maybe there are other aspects of him you can go to town on.

mantolives perhaps youcan dig up this reference/paper of his

Title: The United States and Islam: Toward perpetual war?
Author(s): Hoodbhoy P
Source: SOCIAL RESEARCH 72 (4): 873-902 WIN 2005

Its an interesting paper.....I have the hard copy with me...its not in electronic form.....(and 30 pages of small print are diffcult to scan).

Or this from Foreign Affairs ( I am sure as Rutgers Man youwould have heard of this journal)...agains it makes interesting reading


Title: The idea of Pakistan
Author(s): Hoodbhoy P
Source: FOREIGN AFFAIRS 83 (6): 122-129 NOV-DEC 2004

I am sure this lecture passed over the heads of the undergraduates and most of the faculty.
Recently we had as our guest a lady musician of some repute from Estonia. She had studied her music in Russian Schools and was well versed. She chose to visit Pakistan because she wanted to see first hand how people are oppressed, human rights reduced to mockery and people flogged and hanged publicly. My little daughter came across her on ORKUT and became friends. For her to see things herself, I arranged her VISA and had her fly over to Islamabad.

The first people she bumped into at the airport were the FIA Women Officers. Well dressed and curteous; their demeanour surprised her. She had lost some baggage at the Transit in Heathrow, so I took her to Shaheen Cargo. Within minutes they told her that her baggage had been traced and that she will recieve it in two days through the British Airways Flight, which she did.

She was quite surprised to see my average Pakistani home. A drawing dinning, a small lounge and three bedrooms with attached bathooms and hot water. In the evening I drove her to Daman e Koh and she was spell bound. We ate at Laziz and drove down to Jinnah Super Handicraft market. The owner of the Sindhi store is one Prakash Lal from Mithi Pakistan. I told him that the lady was our guest (ie Pakistani). He showed the best courtesy and showeed her with many pleasantaries. The entire staff took photographs with her.

Next day we moved to Lahore, my parent city. On the motorway that works with express effciency, we were challaned by a motorway Police Officer for over speeding.To her surprise, he was a turbanned sikh Pakistani Officer.

At lahore we stayed at our defence home and the local downtown of Y Bloc impressed her. We had the evening meals at the Food Street and then I took her to the old Lahore by Night. We visited Lal Khoo, Shah Alam Market and then exited to Anarkali. I took her over to Bano Bazar and then drove along the well lit Mall Road. Her next surprise was the Dam Pukht at the Pearl Continental and later drove along the main Boulevard. I even had the drummers and dancers at Liberty Square to entertain her for a few minutes, a chore joined by the goat and monkey man.

The next two days were spent in seeing some of the poor colonies and areas of Lahore in the Rickshaws. She saw beggars, street kids, Khusras and we ate street food.

A few days later she visted some of the villages including Gujranwala.

She saw openess in the Pakistani society for being the guest of a Christian, given free gifts by a Pakistani Hindu, Challaned by a Sikh Pakistani Cop, and all the colors of Lahore/Gujranwala/Rwalpindi/Islamabad/Taxila and Gadoon. She saw the creativity in colored and decorated vans, trucks and buses, diverse cuisine and beautifully laid out hosed in Defence. She saw the hospitailty of the poor in Chungi, Yohannabad, Old Lahore, Gadoon and Ghazi.

To conclude, the lady neither saw public floggings nor gun totting terrorists. She saw all dimensions of the Pakistani society and felt excited. While leaving, she remarked that these were some of the bes days of her life.

I agree with Manto that we are on the up.

Re: # 46
thank you for that.......this was a great effort and worth reading....thank the lord you do not have after burners like our manto bhains!

Based on the observations of Yasser and Ijaz it looks like that Dr. Hoodbhoy ought to be an ignorant who doesnt know the ground realities. Since we dont know the ground realtiies in Pakistan other than what we read in newspapers and see on TV we must look for more observations from Pakistanis and make an opinion.